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Wrath Beta – First Impressions

Random Impressions. Probably contains spoilers.
Hrm.. copying a character is going to take a long time. Ok.. DeathKnight it is.
Hmm.. ok.. a gnome to try it out. Name name name.. All the good ones are took. Ended up naming her Aoem. Because those were the letters under my hands when I slammed my hands down on the keyboard in frustration.
Rawr.. Nice intro. Ok.. so I used to be a hero. Ok.
Wow.. right there.. Arathas, the Lich King….
Though.. at this point in the timeline is he really the Lich King? I mean.. Let’s see

~~~
Boring timeline review
~~~
Arathas angry paladin. Bad Padwa.
Travels to Northrend because his Dad sent him there.
Fights through Northrend. Finds and takes up Frostmourne (killing his dwarf friend).
Frostmourn steals his soul. Arathas no longer feels anything.
Back to Lorderon. Culling of Strat.
Arathas stabs Dad.
Arathas joins up with and starts to lead scourge.
“Everything must die”. – Arathas
{point a}***
Arathas kills lots of stuff.. including Sylvanus (who he raises as a banshee).
Lich King’s power begins to fade he causes Arathas pain.
Arathas travels to Icecrown to “save” Lich King.
Arathas defeats Illidan (who is allied with Kael’thas and Lady Vashj).
Arathas enters Icecrown, goes to the frozen throne and takes up the Lich King’s armor.
{point b}***
~~~

So.. when I materialize as a baby DeathKnight. Am I at point A or point B? I guess it’s not a huge distinction.. but you know.. I wanna know.
Anyway…
Interesting little mini-shows around the ziggaurat. I particularly enjoyed the little show where the DeathKnight Initiates were made (or not made and consumed by ghouls) and the one with the Night Elf Druid in the Blood corner.
Found a book that said I “need more cowbell”. It made me laugh (also laughed that the name “Harmony” was found in violation of the naming policy and was struck down by the Lich King).
So. Ok. I’m evil. Check.
*sigh* Just like normal. Learning a new class and I don’t yet “get” the spells. Need to spend more time with them.
Spec’d by shotgun. On the podcast “Casually Hardcore” they said that speccing into blood was the best levelling spec. So, ok, I threw my points into Blood. Then, at the end of the night I figured out that controllable pets (esp ghouls)(that -really- amuse me) come from the Unholy tree. So I probably need to respec *sigh*

So far I’ve found the quests to be interesting. There’s a lot of “go see that guy over there” quests.. and a lot of “learn how your spells work” quests.. but there’s also a lot of quests the likes of which I’ve never seen before.
The “you’re evil” is a little bit morally troubling. I’m slogging through it though.. I want to see the resolution and figure out how I get to turn “good”.

While I agree that BC and vanilla Wow occur after point B. The DK starting is phased.. and happens in the past.

When you first show up the ziggaurat seems to have just appeared above Death Blight. At one point, as you quest you see time jump forward. You go from “we need to defeat this town” to “we’ve defeated this town, now we need to defeat the next town over”. Time marches forward.

I’m not done with the experience yet.. but I’m fairly sure there will be at least one more jump forward in time that will bring me (Aoem the death knight) back into temporal sync with BC/vanilla Wow.

BUT, when I’m created, it’s in the past. I’m just wondering how far in the past.

My understanding was that at point B Arathas went to the Frozen Throne and became the Lich King.. and he’s been kind of hanging out there ever since (hence the reason we hadn’t seen him in BC/Vanilla Wow.

I could be wrong.. but I think Sylvanus was turned into a Banshee only “five years ago”.. That’d be about the same time that the remnants of the High Elves who followed Prince Kael’Thas started calling themselves “Blood Elves”.

I’m not entirely certain how long ago the Exodar crashed. I thought that was only a few months ago.

He travels to Northrend because he wanted to find and kill Malganis, who was being directed by the Lich King to lure Arthas there. King Terenas sends a messenger at one point directing Arthas and his troops to come home. Arthas burns the ships they sailed to Northrend in and forces his men to stay and fight.

(I just played through that part of Reign of Chaos again. Killer storyline.)

Malganis confronts Arathas. Essentially “Nyah nyah, you can’t catch me” and then runs off to Northrend.
Arathas chass Malganis to Northrend.
Dad sends messenger to Arathas and says “come home”.
Araths burns the boats and then tells his men “Oh, those naughty scourge. They burned our boats. We should get them”. (which is awefully close to evil at this point for Arathas)
Fights through Northrend. Finds and takes up Frostmourne (killing his dwarf friend).
Frostmourn steals his soul. Arathas no longer feels anything.
Back to Lorderon. Culling of Strat.

Here’s where I get a little fuzzy.. did the Culling of Strat happen before he ran off to Northrend?
After he got Frostmourn, why did he go back to Lorderon? Was it just the whispers of the Lich King?

Arathas stabs Dad.
Arathas joins up with and starts to lead scourge.
â€œEverything must dieâ€?. – Arathas

The Culling of Strat happened before he went to Northrend, after it was discovered that Kel’Thuzad was spreading the undead plague by way of plagued grain. The Culling was really Arthas’ first evil act in that he went the way of killing the host to get the cancer. This also caused the rift between he and Uther which ended up playing out upon his return to Lordaeron and his annihilation of the Silver Hand. The Culling was also where Arthas first encountered Mal’Ganis and began his pursuit of him.